Scott’s Weblogs

It was a fun race. We took 2nd place behind Tze Su? sp 2 hours 42 minutes and 40 seconds

We held with tze su upwind runing about a 10th of a knot slower than her the entire leg. Down wind runing the spinnaker though she tacked down wind and we went straight for the mark. With our symetrical spinnaker I thought we had it made about half way to the mark and that we were going to beat her. We were doing a sold 6.5 to 7.2 knots all the way downwind. Tze Su was a dot on the horizon off behind and to starboard of us.. about 2 miles from the mark she started to gain quickly and within the last mile passed us to take the finish line 4 minutes ahead of us. I talked to Patrick later and he said they were doing 9.5 knots reaching with their asymetrical spinnaker. I felt really good about coming in 4 minutes behind Tze Su…. They are based off the 235 hull but he extended the transom 3 ft so that their waterline is 3 ft more than mine. I have a wing keel and draw 2’9″ while he has a fin keel with a bulb and draws 5 ft, my mast is 29 ft tall and his is 33 ft he also has a bow sprit to run an oversized spinnaker on. Also I believe that his boat is lighter by a fair bit than mine. It certainly seems to sit lighter in the water from what I have observed. In any case it is always a boat to be feared in a race. it is fast and well captained

Sunday morning was beautifull and calm. We were almost wondering if there would be enough wind, but soon the breeze stiffened up and we had 8 to 12 for the rest of the day. After and early start the race committe decided to move fleets C and D from inside on te cape fear river to outside on the ocean to use the same course that the bigger boat fleets were using. We found out that morning that the Ultima one of the boats in our fleet had damaged their keel badly the day before running into something and they were not racing anymore. Of the rest of the boats in our fleet only Sea Puppy and Lokahi were able to traverse the Cape Fear River Inlet and get out to the race course. So even though we sailed even better sunday than saturday 🙂 and the races counted this time 🙂 we got second place by default because no one else got out to race. Lokahi ran a great couple of races and beat us both times. Actualy Lokahi beat a of bigger boats even. They also ran their spinnaker where we decided not to. Me, Patty and Jim had not had enough practice together racing and we had never run th spinnaker together before. Not to mention that Me and Patty had only sailed under spinnaker twice before in our lives. However we ran two great races and did well. Lokahi beat us fair and square.. their new sails a clean bottom and spinnaker did us in. Not to mention they didn’t make any mistakes and kevin ran a great race.

Beautifull day for racing or just sailing… about 1.5 to 2 ft seas and 10 to 15 knots of wind..

Crew of Patty, Jim and me..  we raced Angela in Sea Haven  ( a O’Day 27) and Orin on La Bon Vie’ (a Beneteau Oceanus 39)

First race we finished about a minute and a half behind La Bon Vie and won on corrected time…

Second race we came in about 5 minutes behind La Bon Vie for second place…

We during the race we played with boat trim and found that sailing her flat seemed to slow her down but heeling more than about 10 degrees also slowed her down.. about a 5 degree heel seemed to be best… Moving one person forward to about the shrouds also increased our speed by a solid 1/4 to 1/2 knot.
Winds during the first race were about 10 knots and we did better at keeping up with the much heavier La Bon Vie… not to mention that for some reason they didn’t unfurl the entire Jib…. Second Race they flew the whole Jib and with slightly higher winds they consistently ran a bit faster than us.. 🙂 waterline length realy paid off for them 🙂 and with the decent winds they had the power to move.